So Far Behind.... BUT!!

I've finished!!!

The kid's quilts that is.

I might be behind in my Civil War Blocks, have a tutorial to write for Jane's Desperate Housewife's Quilt, and have some patterns to write for my June Challenge, but these cuddly quilts are now in the post on the way to my niece and nephew for their birthdays.

My nephew's birthday isn't till September, but since they were both getting the same thing I decided to send them together, with a note saying he can choose to open his at the same time as his sister, or he can wait till his birthday.

I went with straight line quilting 1/4" in from the block seams to make it easy, and also quilted inside each section of the puppy, plus around the dinosaurs using my new open-toe free-motion foot.  She's a beauty and I'm glad I bought her.  Was a treat to myself the other week when I had time for browsing in the shop.

photo courtesy of here 

The labels on the back where both made in the appropriate foot print, and both quilts have flannel backings for cuddly-ness.

I machine stitched down the binding from the front so they are more durable in the wash (and in play).  I have machine sewn binding before but wasn't very impressed with the results.  These quilts though, came up really well and I think I will use this method again, not only for it's wear factor but also the speed in construction factor!  I had both bindings sewn down within an hour (they'd been attached the day before).

They did finish up very cuddly, and I wish I could be there when the presents were opened, but I guess I just have to wait to hear how they liked them.

Now I have lots more catching up to do, but I'm still doing paid work so time in the sewing room is limited.  One advantage is that I'm earning lots of spending money for the Craft and Quilt Fair this weekend.  Expect a post with lots of goodies soon after !

Oh, and whilst I was taking photos of quilts, I had a little helper:

And the sun was so nice outside I got a photo of my red hot poker plant too

There's a Puppy in my Sewing Room

The puppy top is finished, just in time for my May Challenge deadline.  I would have had it finished a few days ago except that I attached some of the rows in the wrong order and had to undo them.  I hate unpicking.  If you look closely you can probably see a lot of the loose threads still all over the quilt.

I'm really pleased with the result although I am a little disappointed with the colour relationship between the sashing/cornerstones, and the green print in the nine-patch.  I guess that's what I get for buying fabics online and not being able to lay them all out together before I commit.

And since I never got around to taking a photo of the dinosaur quilt till now, here it is too, creases, loose threads and all!  I might put together a pattern for it later, since it was my own design.

I've now got a month and a half to quilt them.  I have a few other little quilts waiting to be quilted as well (one is waiting for fabric on order) so I might try and have a backing/quilting/binding session soon and get them all done together.

Cutting Table

I've been a little slack with my blogging lately.  Can't say what I've been doing to take up the time though, I don't feel like I've done anything much for several days.  Clearly this isn't true though because I've managed to do all this cutting:

That is the puppy and dino quilts, as well as another baby quilt I dreamt up, plus two civil war blocks at the front.

This seems to be a bit of a pattern of mine at the moment, cut up several jobs as once, and then production-line them at the sewing machine.  I'll do as much sewing as I can with each piece before it has to go to the ironing board, do my ironing and then back to the sewing machine.

I've also been doing a lot of hand work, enjoying sitting in my big chair watching The Boo play on the playmat.  I've almost finished the current Retro Nine Patch, and just in time too since Lyn has announced that she'll be releasing this month's block early! 
And here is a sneak peak of a friend's birthday present I've been working on.  You'll have to wait a little while to see the whole thing though, I can't risk her seeing it!

Since taking the above photo off all my cutting out, I have finished the civil war blocks, bringing me back up to date, but I'll save that for another post.

Dino designs and puppy dog tails

Now that I've finished one of the projects on my to-do list, I've started planning for the next new one.

I decided that my niece and nephew (turning 10 and 7) will get lap quilts for their birthdays this year, in August and September.  She LOVES puppy dogs and he LOVES dinosaurs.  Her favourite colour is green, his is blue.  So that makes for an easy start, but then it got harder.

I wanted to make sure the quilts weren't 'kiddy' so that they would last for a long time, but also I wanted them to be fun and bright, not 'adult'. I didn't want something that was heavy in applique because then I might risk not having it finished in time, which has been the fate of my music quilt.  I had decided that I was going to use a pattern (not design it myself) and make use of interesting fabrics in a pieced design.

Doing a google image search for "dog quilt" brought lots of ideas, both using dog fabric and pieced blocks.  I eventually came across There's a Dog on my Quilt.  It must be an older pattern because it is rather hard to find, and even harder to find as a stand alone pattern, not part of a book.  Postage costs for the book (from U.S.) was a bit much when I only wanted one pattern, but eventually I found a copy of the pattern for sale on a very old blog post.  Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, the pattern was soon flying it's way around the world to me at a very reasonable price!

In my searching I found this picture of the quilt:

Photo courtesy of The Quilt Show

 
I liked the idea of the plain blocks to show of a nice print fabric, and only using the 9 patch blocks as alternates.

Then it was on to finding fabrics, but I'll leave that for another post.











The dinosaur quilt happened in a different order.  Google searches for "dinosaur quilt" returned lots of images of baby quilts.  For a 7 year old boy, that wasn't going to work.  Girls might still give into the 'cute' factor, but boys aren't going to want anything that is baby-ish.  In the end I went hunting for fabrics and found this:

Photo courtesy of Bug Fabric

Perfect for a boy who isn't a baby!  I found Bug Fabric and they have an awesome range of animal/creature prints!  From there I found some other coordinating prints, and built a design around it.  Since the dog quilt actually had a dog in it, I didn't want the dino quilt to be just plain repeating pieced blocks.  I gave in and added some applique to my design, but hopefully it will be simple.  It's just a silhouette in one colour.  This is the design I've come up with:

That's my first rough go at designing a quilt in Photoshop.  I know there are gaps between the blocks, and the fabric scales aren't necessary right, but it meant I was able to pull the fabric samples off the website and insert them, rather than relying on colouring in graph paper with a pencil.  Not bad, if I do say so my self.





All the fabric comes from Bug Fabric so once I work out yardage (do we ever say 'meterage'?), I'll be putting in my order.